Johanna Hård

[1] She was the daughter of farmer tenant Sven Haraldsson Jungberg (1736-1830) and Anna Britta Nilsdotter (1761-1825) in Hisingen in Gothenburg.

She had difficulty supporting herself as a widow, and was once arrested for smuggling after having sailed to Copenhagen and sold textiles against the custom regulations.

[1] Hård wrote a letter to her father asking him to testify to her favor and specifically to confirm that her servant Andersson had been at her home at the time of the attack; when the authorities confiscated the letter and asked her about them, she claimed to have written them during temporary insanity and confusion.

Apparently she managed to hide her past and eventually secured a position within the Royal Post Office, where she had a good reputation.

Johanna Hård was remembered in popular memory as one of two images; as the hardened criminal who persuaded her lover to abandon his honest profession to become a pirate; or as the poor destitute widow who did what she could to support herself.